by Matt Ritter
“More what?”
“More survivors. Children.”
“Here?”
“Yes, Colonel Adams’s men brought them in last night.”
“How many are there?”
“Two. A girl and a younger boy.”
Ben shivered, thinking about what those children had been through.
“Have you talked to them?” Ben asked.
“No. There’s a guard outside the door.”
“Is Colonel Adams here?”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“Alright, get ready to run the same tests on these two. Check vitals, draw blood, and make sure they’ve eaten. Be comforting.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll be there shortly,” Ben said, turning down the hallway.
In the elevator, Ben rubbed the skin on his cheek, and the feeling had not yet fully recovered. He wondered if in the seconds before dying in the rain a person felt pain or numbness. He thought of the children again and hoped for the latter. He removed his coat and hung it on the rack next to the lab door. As he turned, he was startled by the Valley Manager who was standing right behind him.
“Sorry to sneak up on you like that.”
The Valley Manager’s perennial halitosis filled the space between them. Ben tried not to recoil.
“Valley Manager.”
“You’ve heard we found two more?”
“Just now.”
“Can you believe it?” the Manager said with excitement.
Ben shook his head.
“I wonder how many more there are. I wonder if you’re one.”
Ben rubbed his numb cheek. “Not likely.”
“A much greater portion of our population than we know of could actually be able to survive it.”
“I hope we don't have to find out.”
“If we weren’t being overrun at the borders, we could screen the soldiers. One soldier who can operate in the rain is worth fifty who can’t.”
“Screen?” Ben felt himself getting angry. “You’re talking about killing people? Our people. Our Valley’s children.”
The Valley Manager ignored his comments. “Finding soldiers who could survive the rain is what we need, but we can’t afford to screen them. The children are the answer.”
Ben tried to calm himself, realizing that arguing would do no good.
The Manager continued, “I’ve heard reports of escalating resistance activity here in the city. With the heavier rains, we haven’t been able to counter.” The Valley Manager looked over Ben’s shoulder to the windows. “This sunshine should help.”
Both men turned to look out the window. The morning sky reflected off the black lab bench countertops.
“Is this the result of yesterday’s seeding flight?” the Valley Manager asked, nodding to the windows.
“It’s too early to tell. The bacteria we released were meant to compete with those causing the rain, but I’m not sure how it could work so quickly.”
“Well, I hope you’re on to something. Our men need sun, and a lot more of it.”
“We’ll know more when we do the sampling flight later this afternoon,” Ben said.
“Do more sampling, make another seeding flight. Do whatever you need to do. If these rains don’t stop, the whole Valley, our way of life, is in jeopardy.”
“I’m doing everything I can,” Ben said. He could feel himself starting to sweat. Something about the way the Manager watched him while he spoke made him nervous. He couldn’t help but feel that the screening of children was partly due to his failure to improve the weather. He made his face blank, as he knew the Manager would take advantage of his guilt.
“In the meantime, keep working with the children. Figure out how they survive and if we can replicate it.”
Ben nodded.
The Manager stared at him and looked disappointed. Ben averted his eyes, lowering his gaze to the ground. “Don’t fail here. We found them for you; now figure out if we can make more. I’m also discussing with Colonel Adams and other UP command ways we can use them at the border.”
“Do you ever think about your parents?” Ben asked, trying to change the subject. “Do you remember when you were their age?”
“Why?” The Valley Manager stared at him indifferently. “They're gone. They were from a bygone and weak generation. One that tried to create peace and failed.”
“What if we weren't taken from them when we were so young?” Ben asked.
“We weren't taken; they gave us up.” The Manager eyed Ben, trying to read his face. “It was best for the Valley.”
Ben looked down at his feet again. “I suppose,” he said. “I think it would help if we found these children’s parents.”
“Why?” the Manager asked.
“I’d like to test their parents, see if the resistance is hereditary.”
“I’ll ask Colonel Adams to have them found.”
Ben watched the Valley Manager closely, realizing at that moment he was probably lying. No such effort to find the children’s parents would be made.
The Valley Manager nodded at Ben.
“For the Valley,” he said.
“For the Valley,” Ben repeated.
The Manager spun around and left the lab. Ben leaned against the bench, thinking about the rain and what to do next. There were too many problems, too many variables. He felt overwhelmed. One thing at a time, he told himself.
A short time later, the door opened, and his lab assistant walked in.
“Sir, I did the exam and drew blood from the two children who just arrived. You need to come see something immediately.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When the rain stopped in the early morning hours, the pump house grew cold and silent. Will awoke with pangs of hunger and discomfort from the damp concrete below him. He looked across at Zach, who was hunched over his pack, sleeping. The light of the seasick dawn snuck under the pump house door. Will rose, tiptoed over Zach, and pulled it open. A sheet of silver light came over the eastern Gabilans, and heavy clouds still hung in the downvalley sky.
“Zach.” Will toed his thigh with the tip of his boot. “Zach. Wake up. It’s clear, and we have to get going before the sun is up.”
Zach’s blond hair was stuck to his forehead where it had dried from the night before. The rest of his hair was a mess of bleached streaks and yellow hay. A peach fuzz of white hairs crossed his upper lip, faded on his cheekbones, and became thicker once again above his eyes. Longer white hairs projected randomly from his freckled chin, and it occurred to Will that Zach may have never shaved. He opened his eyes slowly and looked up at Will, not yet distinguishing the real world from his dreams. He blinked rapidly. His eyes were bloodshot on the inside corners with visible red veins that ran from the sapphire blue irises around the inside of the eyeball. He stared up at Will, his pupils contracting in the line of blue light coming through the open door.
In an attempt to say something, Zach just grunted.
A minute later they were both outside the pump house, Zach rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm, peering into the distance.
“Soledad,” Will said. “Looks like it’s still raining there.”
“I heard rumors about Soledad growing up. What happened there?”
“I’m not sure. I think it was destroyed and abandoned in the early wars. There hasn’t been a loading ramp down to it from the longvalley in many years.”
Across the patchwork plane of agricultural fields, they could see buildings rising in a tight cluster. A white-water tower on a cross-braced metal tripod stood above the town and leaned as if it would fall at any minute. Beyond the water tower were purple stands of weedy eucalyptus, a jagged forest planted by the wind.
“Should we go around?” Zach asked.
“We don’t have time. We’re exposed out here. We need to move quickly, stay alongside the highway, out of sight. Past Soledad, we can get back down into the riverbed. Hopefully, the rain holds off for the rest of th
e day.”
“It doesn’t look good,” Zach said, nodding to the clouds above Soledad. “I’m hungry.”
“Take this,” Will said, tearing the last heel of bread from the old man in half. “We’ll get more food soon.”
They went out across the muddy plane toward the town as the morning warmed. Water puddled between black furrows in the fields, and the heavy clay stuck to their boots with each step. In a field of unharvested broccoli, Zach bent to snap the green heads from the plants. The first rays of sun fell onto the Valley floor.
“Don’t eat too much of that,” Will said, nibbling on a head himself. “You’ll just get sick.”
“I’m so hungry,” Zach said with green partially chewed broccoli in his teeth.
“I know. Me, too.”
They entered the town along an abandoned road whose pavement had long ago been destroyed. Mustard weed and horehound had taken advantage of cracks in the tarmac, making the road barely recognizable for long stretches. Some houses still stood with entire walls missing, their insides exposed and streaked with mud. At other lots along the road, all that remained was a concrete foundation or a stack of bricks, once a chimney, slowly being melted by the rain.
They came through a neighborhood in which the roofs of each house were collapsed, as if some giant had carelessly pushed over each house, smashing some and tearing others apart. Splintered wood was strewn about, wrecked, rusted, and stripped cars, everything covered with a thin layer of brown mud. They came to the front of a house where they looked over a low picket fence into a deep, wide hole in the ground. The facade of the house seemed undamaged, but there was nothing left of it beyond the front wall.
“This place looks like it got bombed long ago,” Zach said.
“Yeah,” Will said, looking around nervously. “Do you get the sense we’re being watched?”
Zach looked around. “No. Everything seems abandoned.”
“I don’t think it is. Stay alert and keep that rifle in your hands.”
They came out of the old residential neighborhoods, past an empty school, and into the downtown where the destruction was much greater. Not a single pane of glass remained unbroken. Many of the buildings looked like they had blown out from the inside, spewing their guts onto the street in front of them. Street trees, long dead, were cracked, splintered, and torn in half in front of the buildings.
A sign that read Soledad Hotel hung cockeyed from a wire and swayed slightly. They crouched at the corner of an old brick building and surveyed the street and destroyed buildings beyond. A slight breeze blew on the morning sun, and a loud truck passed on the longvalley highway above them. Zach picked up a glass block that had fallen out of the wall below the hotel sign.
“You think one of these places has anything to eat?” he asked.
“I’m sure people have gone through them hundreds of times and got everything valuable.”
“There,” Will said, pointing along the sidewalk. “Let’s move around these buildings and keep going.”
They hustled along the sidewalk, coming out into the street to go around piles of rubble. On the far side of downtown, they crossed in front of a deserted gas station and convenience store with its windows and glass front door completely gone.
“There has to be something to eat in there,” Zach said, limping behind Will.
“I doubt it.”
“Come on, we should at least check.”
Will looked around. “Alright, quickly.”
Pebbles of safety glass crunched underfoot as they stepped through the broken windows into the store. Metal shelving units were bare and knocked over. They moved around the store purposefully, driven by their hunger, looking at each shelf, then behind the counter on which sat the open and empty register.
“Here,” Zach said, pulling a brown cardboard box from a lower shelf behind the counter.
Behind the box was a smaller white box with bold red and green lettering on the side that said Hostess Fruit Pie. Zach tore the box open, and inside were four oblong pillows, individually wrapped in blue, green, and red plastic. Apple Fruit Pie with Real Fruit Filling. Zach set the rifle down on the counter, threw a fruit pie to Will, and pulled open another.
When Will opened the wrapping, the smell of caramel and cinnamon came to his nose. He slipped the folded pastry out of the bag, looked it over carefully, then bit down on the orange, blistered crust with its layer of hardened, opaque, sugar glaze. The crust was firm but yielded a soft gelatinous apple jelly from the inside. His senses were invaded, and he instantly felt ravenous. Each bite was better than the previous. Everything he'd eaten in his life to that point was a mild version of the apple pie. Hints of the pie were in the apple orchard whose fruit he'd picked as a youth. Each bite contained the best parts of the apple, the orchard, and the golden afternoon sun from those happy days long gone.
No caramel, nor cinnamon essence, flavors from a world long ago gone, had ever dissolved on Will’s palette. He breathed deeply, and aromatic flavors, not natural, but created by man for man, coated his nasal passage. For all its vague familiarity, he couldn’t remember having tasted anything like it before. For a moment, and Will didn’t recognize it, there was no pain in his cheek, no dead wife and missing daughter, just hunger being satisfied.
He looked at Zach, whose eyes were closed, and he was chewing intently with one hand on his lips. Zach opened his eye and saw Will looking at him.
“What is this?” he asked with a full mouth.
“I don’t know.”
“So good.”
Will stopped chewing. He was looking out of the darkness of the convenience store in the bright light of the parking lot. Four men stood there, three of whom had rifles pointed in their direction. A shudder went through him. Two more men stepped around the front edge of the building, each with a gun aimed at them.
“Don’t move,” one of the men yelled.
Will put the last bite of pie into his mouth, and he could see Zach do the same.
“Hands up,” came a second command.
They both lifted their hands, Zach, with an apple pie in each.
“Turn around and face the back wall. Keep your hands where we can see them.”
Will was grabbed from behind, the handgun removed from his belt, and patted down the length of his body.
“Alright, outside. Walk slowly or you’ll get shot.”
Will squinted as the bright morning light reflected off the old pavement in the gas station parking lot, blinding him briefly before his eyes adjusted. With their hands still raised, they were marched into the middle of the lot where the four men awaited them. The two men standing on the edge of the group fanned out and formed a wide circle, one with his gun on Will, the other on Zach.
Will knew these men were seasoned, clearly not UP soldiers, nor not ones he'd seen. Each man was focused and careful, and they were in their late thirties or forties, much too old for the UP.
“What did you find in there?” the man in the middle of the group of four asked, looking at the wrapped pastries in Zach’s hands.
Zach made no effort to answer. His white hair was ablaze in the morning sun, and he looked down on the leader, a Hispanic man who was much shorter than he.
“Let’s see. Hand those over.”
Zach handed him one of the pies.
“Both of them.”
He reluctantly relinquished the second pie to the leader’s outstretched and waiting hand. He took the pies and handed them to the man standing next to him and turned to Will.
“What are you two doing here?”
“We’re headed to Gonzales,” Will answered.
“For what reason?”
“I live there. My daughter is there.”
“Willie Taft?” The leader took a step back to get a better view of Will. The men turned to watch the surprise on their leader’s face. Will squinted at him and turned his head slightly to the side. “Willie. It’s me, Jose.”
“Jose Alvarez?” Will looked
the man up and down.
Jose spoke to the other men. “I know this man. We served together.”
Jose smiled, and wrinkles formed in the dark skin around his eyes. He was a thin, muscular man, maybe Will’s age, but could have been ten years older. His leathery skin exposed the fact that he’d spent most of his adult life in the sun. His face was darkly peppered with a five-o’clock shadow. Despite his rugged appearance, he had undeniable warmth in his large brown eyes.
Will couldn’t help but smile when he saw Jose’s grin. “I thought you were dead,” Will said. “You never made it back.”
Jose approached Will with his arms open. They hugged, each pounding the other on the upper back.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” Will said.
“Well, here I am. Not everyone who didn’t come back from the border is dead.”
Confusion crossed Will’s face. “Yeah, but the explosion. I was there.”
“I survived. Barely.” Jose lifted his flannel and exposed a large scar that went across his stomach and ended at what looked like a hole in his skin that never filled in. The scar was much lighter than the dark skin surrounding it. “It took a long time to recover. It didn’t take long to escape though.”
“And now you’re here in Soledad?”
Jose jerked his head and looked around. “Were you followed?”
Will looked back into the upvalley distance. “I don’t think so,” he said, but he wasn’t sure.
Everyone looked but saw nothing moving.
“We’re too exposed here,” Jose said, no longer smiling. “Let’s get out of the open.”
Jose nodded to his men, then turned back to Will and said, “Follow us. We’ll talk more in the prison.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mary McElroy watched while the soldiers toiled in the grass field behind the school. They began work early in the morning the day after they arrived. As Mary crossed from the cafeteria to the gym, she heard the repetitive high metallic ping of a fence post pounder. From their two trucks, the soldiers had unloaded fencing material, posts, wire, and tools. By lunch on the first day they had methodically erected an L-shaped run of tall fence.
